


The Future Says Hi

by Page161of180



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, F/M, Future Fic, Gen, Happy Endings For Everyone, M/M, Post 4x06, Post-Canon, Visitor from the future, pending apocalypse notwithstanding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 08:34:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18007460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Page161of180/pseuds/Page161of180
Summary: Alice-centric, sort-of future fic. A Waugh tells a Physical Kid in need of a hug that they are not alone here. And, sometimes, it does get better. (Pending future apocalypse notwithstanding.)





	The Future Says Hi

**Author's Note:**

> This little scene wouldn't get out of my head. It takes place about a year or so post the events of 4x06 (or about twenty five years in the future, depending on who's counting), at a point when some of the current plot points have been resolved, and others have not. The plot's not really the important thing here.
> 
> The important thing here is Alice. Here's what you should know about the way I see Alice. She is smart and determined and accomplished and makes genuinely terrible decisions and lashes out at people who care for her. I think she loves Quentin and is hurt by him closing the book on them, even though I think that if she got him back, they'd fall apart in all the same ways, every single time. She can say bitter and cruel and unnecessary things (including about herself, and this takes place in her head, so, be warned), and she is also so delighted by good in the world and wants to protect the innocent. She is felled by her hubris over and over. I see her, at her core, as a person with too much trust in her own decision-making skills and not enough trust in her own good heart and soul. I've been so moved by her storyline in the first part of season 4, and I am looking forward to watching her go from a person who is flawed and torn up about that fact to the point of making herself and others suffer for it, to a person who is flawed and at peace with it. But most of all, I want *her* to know that she will get from Point A to Point B. This is that story, as told by (an eerily familiar) someone from Point C.

  
  


Alice turned the page of the book in front of her deliberately. Too deliberately for the fragile onion-skin page, she realized, and gentled the movement at the last moment, unclenching her thumb and index finger, before the page could rip. She hazarded a look up, to see if her slip had been noticed. But the young woman across the table was still lounging, insouciant, across her chair, head tipped back, her book casually levitating at eye level. 

 

Alice looked back down at her own book and turned another page-- carefully. An hour ago, she had been looking for any leads she could find on how the Library actually monitored flow levels in their pipes. So, not minding her  _ own _ business, exactly. But keeping her word to steer clear of Q and the rest of their-- _ his _ \--people. Yet now, somehow, she was right back in the middle of another classic Brakebills mess, biting her tongue as she tried to assess whether there was anything they could do to actually avert the disaster apparently on its way, or whether this was yet another situation where everything they ( _ she _ ) did was fated to make it all worse, and no one but her seemed to realize it.

 

“I can  _ hear  _ you questioning my methods.” The-- woman? Girl? She looked around Alice’s age, a little younger, but something about her birdlike bones transcended age--smirked without taking her eyes off the book floating in front of her. She gave an indolent flick of one finger and a page flipped. 

 

She wielded her telekinesis so naturally.

 

“You can just  _ say  _ you think my plan’s half-assed,” she added. “I’m used to it, you know. Future-you isn’t exactly a shy schoolgirl, either. Wardrobe choices notwithstanding.”

 

It was disconcerting the way this woman-- _ Theo _ , Alice should use the name she’d given-- spoke so casually about something-- _ the future _ \--that Alice worried about every. Single. Day. 

 

Alice crossed her arms over her chest protectively. “I’m not sure your  _ plan  _ even counts as a plan. You’re just-- grasping at straws and hoping that one of them will turn out to be a solution.”

 

Theo smirked again. “ _ There _ ’s the Alice Quinn I know.”

 

It had been a while since anyone--anyone who knew Alice, at least--had treated being  _ her _ like it was a good thing. Alice didn’t really remember how to respond to it.

 

“Did-- did she send you here-- to me, I mean? The Alice Quinn you know.”

 

Theo’s sculpted eyebrows furrowed. She flicked the book aside with one hand and swiveled forward in her chair in one fluid, dramatic motion.

 

“The  _ Alice Quinn I know _ ”-- she parroted Alice’s words like they’d been funny-- “told me  _ not  _ to come to you.”

 

Alice knew her eyes widened at that. 

 

Theo waved a hand, a what-can-you-do gesture. “She said it was a . . . tough time, and you wouldn’t necessarily want to get involved in another doomed worlds-saving quest. She also mentioned that you might not care to meet--or even know of-- _ me _ . At this particular moment, anyway.” 

 

“This particular moment,” Alice repeated. 

 

Theo ducked her head behind the dark waves of her hair, the first gesture Alice had seen her make since knocking on Alice’s door that morning that didn’t drip with practiced elegance. It made Alice’s heart hurt. 

 

“And you didn’t take her-- my--  _ her  _ advice.” Alice could hear the challenge in her own tone. 

 

“I don’t take direction well,” Theo said with an indifferent shrug, bored sophistication back in place. “And anyway, what choice did I have? I’m staring down an orgy-level fuckfest here, trawling through my family’s collectively misspent youth, and  _ you’re  _ the brightest witch of your age.”

 

Alice’s heart lurched, again, at the thought of who had probably read the Harry Potter series to Theo, but she pressed on. “You could have gone to Julia.”

 

Theo smiled reflexively at Julia’s name. Everyone did-- no matter how many well-meaning mistakes Julia herself had made. 

 

“Aunt Julia is amazing,” Theo allowed. “But, while I’d deny it if she ever asked, when it comes to a give-no-quarter, burn-the-fuckers down kind of fight, I’d choose you everytime. Or Aunt Margo. But  _ you  _ are  _ infinitely _ better at research.”

 

_ Right _ , Alice thought. For good witch problems, go to Julia. Plotting and destruction--  _ that  _ was Alice’s legacy. Things really never would change.

 

Theo tipped her head to one side, looked at Alice carefully, then shrugged whatever she was thinking off again-- another practiced gesture. “Anyway,” she said, “you and I both know Julia would never be able to resist telling my dad. And, like I told you, he can’t know.” 

 

At the mention of Theo’s dad, Alice really did rip the page.

 

“ _ Shit _ .” She swore under her breath and began curling her fingers to shape a small mending spell. Theo just raised an eyebrow-- damn her.

 

Alice had to admit that, as far as opening lines delivered by a strange woman on your doorstep went, “I’m Quentin Coldwater’s daughter from the future, and I need your help to save my family” had been-- effective. It had gotten Alice  _ here _ , at least, in a hidden corner of the Brakebills library, searching for a needle in a haystack, hoping no one would walk by who would recognize her and report to the Library. It had worked without  _ proof _ , even-- the ambient magic levels being too low to attempt even a relatively simple truth serum. 

 

Well, without proof other than the obvious, anyway.

 

Theo stretched in her chair, raising her long arms above her head. She wasn’t  _ exceptionally  _ tall, but the lines of her wrists and fingers were tellingly long and graceful. Piano-player hands, Stephanie would have called them. Nothing like Alice’s. Alice could practically see a martini glass balanced in one, the other pouring expertly from a shaker. 

 

Alice forced herself to meet amber eyes. They were lined in black. She’d taken the time for a smokey eye, notwithstanding the pending apocalypse. Of course she had. Alice had to look back down at the book. 

 

“You know, you don’t look very much like Q,” she said, tucking a stick-straight strand of blond hair behind her glasses. She didn’t let herself focus on what she imagined a child of Q’s  _ would  _ look like-- little, and messy, like an over-excited puppy, and (in her heart) always nearsighted, with blond hair and blue eyes.

 

“I guess that’s because you take after your  _ other _ father,” Alice forced out, venturing out on a limb that really wasn’t all that much of a limb. “I’m assuming  _ he _ ’s your . . . biological father.” A hard swallow. “ _ Eliot _ , I mean.”

 

Theo didn’t answer immediately. But when Alice made herself look up from the book, Theo’s expression was all the confirmation she needed. 

 

“Fen is my mother,” Theo finally said. “If you were wondering.”

 

“I wasn’t--” Alice began to lie.

 

“She and dad never do get divorced, even after he and my other dad . . . Well. Somewhere along the line she and dad wound up . . . _ friends _ , I guess you’d say. With the occasional, somewhat-more-than-cordial digression,” she amended with another fluid gesture at herself, her long Fillorian bell sleeve fluttering as she moved. “Hence, the vision before you. Whatever. It works for them. All of them. I prefer not to think about the mechanics.” 

 

_ All of them _ , Alice considered with a kind of morbid curiosity.  _ All of them  _ meaning Q didn’t mind Eliot sometimes taking his wife to bed? Or  _ all of them  _ meaning . . . She pushed away the memory of that horrible morning after the emotion bottles, but the feeling of it lingered.  _ How typical _ , she couldn’t help thinking. That  _ she  _ would end up exiled in  _ Modesto _ , while Q--who had fucked up himself, a lot of times--would wake up tangled in silk sheets in the palace he dreamed about as a child, a sweet, brave ex-peasant girl on one side, and on the other a dashing man with a high king’s blood who for years had trailed Q like some sleek, devoted dog. 

 

“It’s none of my business,” Alice said sharply-- to Theo and to her own runaway imagination. 

 

Theo tipped her head-- neither agreement nor disagreement, just an acknowledged that Alice thought so. “You really are the smartest one of the bunch,” she said after a moment. She was wearing the same look that Eliot used to get upon seeing an impressive bit of magic--even Alice’s magic, sometimes--before he remembered to seem above it all.

 

“It wasn’t that difficult to figure out,” Alice demurred.

 

It  _ wasn’t _ . And it wasn’t as surprising as it felt like it should be, either. Not after the running into each other’s arms, and Eliot’s solemn, tear-filled eyes, and the big public declarations once they’d finally banished the monster possessing Eliot-- the one time in the past year that Q had actually  _ asked  _ for her help. And not after the blooming-open looks Q had kept giving Eliot in the aftermath. The same looks Q used to-- well. That he had  _ always _ given to Eliot, in retrospect. But he’d given them to  _ Alice _ once, too. Those looks, and others besides.

 

Alice felt a sudden twist of regret for things that used to be, and that apparently never would be again, going by the existence of this young woman that Q and Eliot would raise together for the next-- twenty years? Twenty-five? It felt like mourning, but it also felt like bitterness and jealousy. It made Alice instantly defensive.

 

“You didn’t have to hide it from me,” she was suddenly saying. “That Eliot and Q are together. I’m-- I  _ want  _ them to be happy.”

 

She  _ did _ . She wanted Q to be happy, anyway. She wanted that desperately. And she didn’t wish Eliot ill. They  _ should  _ get to grow old together, in whatever occasionally polyamorous way they chose. No matter how much the idea stung.

 

“I don’t know what kind of person I am, where you come from, or what you think of me. But I wouldn’t have just-- refused to help, if you’d told me from the beginning that you’re both of theirs.”

 

“I didn’t think that,” Theo insisted. “I just-- thought it might be . . . indelicate . . . to bring it up.”

 

“Indelicate?” Alice snorted. She sounded so dismissive, like the niffin she’d once been. Or maybe the niffin had just been like the person she always was, it was hard to tell anymore. “Jesus, you must think I’m so pathetic. ‘Poor Alice, still pining over Q. Who knows what  _ awful  _ thing she’ll do if someone points out that Q got tired of her bullshit and picked the guy he was always half in love with, anyway.’” 

 

“Uh,  _ no _ .  _ Jesus _ . I didn’t  _ think _ that. I know you’re not . . . pining,” Theo said. She suddenly sounded so much like Q, back when Alice had first met him, that Alice didn’t know how to react except to bare her teeth.

 

“What do  _ you _ know?” she hissed. “Does it come up a lot at family dinners, that  _ I  _ used to be the one your dad fucked, while Eliot waited around for table scraps?”

 

Q would have yelled back, or maybe thrown up his hands and left. Either way, he wouldn’t have been able to hide his emotions. But Theo just raised one dark eyebrow. “It’s more of a dessert conversation, actually,” she intoned.

 

Alice choked out a strangled noise that was almost a laugh, in spite of herself, then pressed her lips together to keep it in. 

 

Theo smiled. 

 

It was a nice smile, actually. And familiar in ways that were hard to admit. It reminded Alice, forcefully, that Eliot could be kind, too, in his way-- even if it was a way that didn’t always  _ feel  _ kind to Alice, and that she suspected was very carefully constructed  _ not  _ to feel kind. His nonchalance was like one of the silky tunics he liked, thrown over a deep well of concern. Just like Q’s earnest sweetness was a lumpy sweater hiding the implacable core of him. All the contrasting parts of both of them--and probably parts of Fen, too, but Alice didn’t really  _ know  _ her--mixed well, in this woman in front of Alice. They  _ worked _ . 

 

A wave of shame washed over Alice’s entire body. 

 

“I’m sorry,” she said, weak and a little nauseous. “I don’t know why I said that. God, I don’t know why I do  _ anything  _ anymore. What kind of  _ person _ am I?”

 

Theo looked more uncomfortable at Alice’s display of emotion than she had at petty meanness, but she offered another cool shrug. “Yes, truly shocking,” she said, monotone. “I’ve never heard anyone lash out to cover strong feelings before. You’ve  _ met  _ my father, right?”

 

Alice frowned. “It’s nice of you to try to make me feel better, but you shouldn’t make excuses for me. I should be . . . better than this. I  _ try  _ to be better. Or, I think I do, but I just get so . . . so  _ frustrated _ , sometimes. By everything. I feel  _ angry  _ and  _ guilty _ , and I don’t know how to be good, when the world makes me so,  _ so  _ angry.”

 

“The world is bullshit,” Theo said simply. It sounded glib, like the rest of her persona, but Alice could tell it was real. “If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here, forcing you to fast-forward through the grieving process on a relationship you have every right to grieve, because the universe is out to kill the people I love-- _ again _ \--and you’re the only person in our family who can plan for shit.”

 

“My plans aren’t always . . .  _ good _ ,” Alice hedged, after giving herself a moment to let the words sink in. “Not in any sense of the word.” 

 

Theo shrugged. “At least they  _ are  _ plans. As opposed to thinly veiled self-immolation attempts, which--let’s face it--is what I’m leaning toward here.” 

 

Alice smiled, before schooling her face into sobriety and checking to make sure they hadn’t attracted attention with this little heart-to-heart. No sign of onlookers.

 

“We should get back to work,” she said anyway, getting up to search for volume three of the book she’d been torturing. 

 

Just as she stood to leave, however, Theo spoke again.

 

“For what it’s worth, I didn’t decide to come to _ you _ for help because you’re some kind of evil genius. I mean, yes, you’re a stone-cold killer sometimes--”

 

Alice winced, but Theo went on, “--but that doesn’t make you a bad person.”

 

“I’m pretty sure that’s  _ exactly  _ what it means to be a bad person, actually.” 

 

Theo cocked her head. “Okay, here’s the thing. I can’t tell you how to feel about whatever it is you’ve done that you’re clearly beating yourself up over, because that’s between you and you, and I wasn’t there and I only have old stories about what went down, anyway. What I  _ can  _ tell you is that I don’t trust anymore more than you when it comes to protecting our family. Even if you fail pretty miserably sometimes.”

 

There was that phrase again:  _ our family _ . Somehow, in the next twenty or twenty-five years, Alice and Q and all the others get to a point where Q’s little girl actually thinks of  _ her  _ as part of their  _ family _ , not just the know-it-all bitch who betrayed them and screwed everything up because she was too afraid of repeating her own mistakes. Alice wouldn’t believe it, if the proof weren’t literally sitting in front of her.

 

“And as for the pining thing,” Theo was saying, either oblivious to or politely ignoring the swell of emotion threatening to spill out of Alice, “I know you get over my dad, because I know what people who are nauseatingly in love look like.  _ Hello _ , I was raised by two of them. And  _ that  _ is  _ exactly  _ what you look like around-- Well. I promised you before I left that I wouldn’t tell you his name, so that you don’t freak out or self-sabotage or whatnot. So I’ll just call him ‘Charlie and Lucy’s dad,’ and we’ll leave it at that.”

 

Alice sucked in a breath. “Charlie and . . .”

 

Theo gave an enigmatic smile. “Mm.” 

 

Theo’s face and the books stacked between them, and the whole library, really, went watery and blurred as Alice tried to process all the information she’d been given. She thought, suddenly, of the World Book and of Plover’s spell. The sinking in her gut as she’d worried where the universe would say that someone who had done the things she’d done  _ belongs _ .

 

“Theo, in your future” she asked, voice straining, “am I . . .”

 

She trailed off, not sure what she meant to ask.  _ Am I okay? Am I really where I’m supposed to be? Do I deserve all the things you’re telling me I get, somehow, or do I wake up at night, still, wondering why everything I choose ends up going so, so wrong? _

 

Theo reached across the table, with a long elegant hand, and squeezed Alice’s own. “Aunt Alice,” she said with feeling, “you’re  _ happy _ .” 

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading!


End file.
